Help with campaign idea

[DrArkadius]

Hi, I've been DMing for a decent bit in 3.5 and I recently had the idea of running a campaign in which the players join a resistance force in a moderately sized city taken over by an army of hobgoblins and a few of the city's nobles that betrayed the rest. In general I was just looking for a few ideas of some neat things i can for the campaign based on the resistance idea. I basically want the players to be in a situation where the enemy forces are easily more powerful or numerous but the players have the advantage of being able to blend in with the enslaved population.
The players will be starting out at level 1 but I am not sure how many levels i want this to be the story. Maybe up until 5th or 6th level but not lower then that. During the resistance, an extremely harsh winter will be going on, making it extremely difficult to send a message to other cities.

Anyway i thank you all for any help given.

[Kol Korran]

some ideas:
- find a way to blackmail or otherwise "persuade" a weapon merchant to "give" some weapons to the resistance.

- perhaps infiltrate a great party of the rulers, and try and gain as much info as you can. (see how well your players roleplay. some can sneak around while others talk).

- another agent of the resistance has gone missing. you know that he was caught red handed and ran. you need to find him before the police does. won't be easy- he is laying low as hell, and the search is intensive.

-some of the slaves have formed their own little group. there have been talks with them about joining, but they don't trust us. perhaps you can do something to impress them? (break someone out of prison/ holding camp, steal some valued symbolic item, kill a notorious slave basher)

- the elite soldiers of <insert notorious group here> are celebrating! they ordered wine, and other stuff. perhaps you can go and try and assassinate them? we got this poison, if you can just get it to...

hopefully this might get you going. just don't make sense motive counter checks too hard. :smalltongue:

VIVA LA RESISTANCE! :smallamused:

[hisnamehere]

- have alternate groups within the city working at odds with the PCs. The PCs get to the end of an adventure only to find that another group has been there first, using the spoils to further their own agendas (that aren't necessarily counter the the PCs' own, but definitely aren't what the party had intended). See the new Nikita series for inspiration, as she (Nikita) is working to sabotage the plans of her former organization, Division, with 3rd parties working at odds to both her and Division. Intrigue, drama, oh my!

- If it's a hard winter in an occupied city, simple necessities will be in high demand, so intercepting food shipments and the like are a staple.

- the Resistance gets wind of a hobgoblin ritual of some kind and must stop it (or stop the product of the the ritual).

- one of the nobles is actually a double-double-agent (a la the furian who aided Riddick in Chronicles of Riddick), which the PCs discover, gaining an ally within the occupiers' upper ranks. (probably save this idea for later in the campaign, after adventure sites outside the castle have been exhausted).

- Advice: Don't have every adventure use the same gimmicks. The TV show, Robin, continually uses, "sneak into a yet-unknown area of the castle to rescue something/someone, then encounter the Sheriff, but narrowly escape for some reason." My wife no longer watches it, "because it's repetitive and boring."

- the Resistance gets rumor of a secret passage out of the (walled) city. Investigating, it turns out to be a trap. Someone gets captured, or an important NPC gets killed. Maybe the ensuing confrontation has the possibility of collapsing the secret passage - the PCs must win the fight, but also win without destroying the place.

Happy gaming,